Only Adults Allowed !!!

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right....  

 [A] decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

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I preface a brief discussion of my view regarding abortion with two familiar American utterances.  The first quote is that of Abraham Lincoln from his Second Inaugural and the next phrase is that of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration. I use these quotes to better focus on two aspects of reality.  Lincoln reminds us that a multitude of decisions have the potential to harm ourselves or others and, conversely, to nourish us.  Whether on a family level or broader societal one, some decisions can be remarkably simple, even obvious, while a host of others prove stunningly perplexing on all levels. For these problematic junctures, Lincoln appropriately points to a sense of understanding lying well beyond the confines of the human skull—a rare-earth creativity and insight intervening to transmute reciprocal malice and its lust for destruction with the redemptive power of charity and goodwill.    

Finally, I quote Jefferson to frankly concede that some decisions—those marking irreversible finality—appropriately call for "a decent regard" and healthy obeisance before the thunderously stark and serious.  Ridiculing the handicapped, for example, is profoundly abusive and is an indicator of spiritual bankruptcy. Similarly, a flippant attitude regarding abortion is deeply disturbing—as if the medical profession dedicated to healing and health should jest the following before shredding a living person in the womb--"You make them, we scrape them."   If there ever were a societal flag imbued with ominous warnings of decline, this "dead canary" of rank inhumanity is surely it.

Those with no voice in community decisions always lie most vulnerable and naked before Mack the Knife.







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